Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Binge Grafix..

I spent much of the weekend helping my neighbor set up his new laptop.Turns out,he really doesn't have any computer experience,so there was a whole lot of hand holding to get him through the process of installing the various software and drivers necessary to do the things most of us take for granted..."How do I get an e-mail address?".."Can I play DVD's?"....Left click this,..right click that...

I'm not complaining..Really.

Someone took the time to help me out back when I got my first Commodore 64,(who remembers that?),and I think it's a Karmic imperative to pay that forward.In fact,his enthusiasm for acquiring these new skills reminded me of the reason I was anxious to get involved with computing in the first place.All those wonderful toys!..

These last several days,I've been playing with a program that came with my Windowblinds software called "Logon Studio",and once I got started,it was hard to let go.

Logon studio lets you create your own logon screen for signing in to your computer.Text and graphics,as well as the layout are all customizable.It's all about the bells and whistles boys and girls!

I took this wallpaper downloaded from the Windowblinds website,.. ..and made a fun little Halloween logon. ..While still in the spirit of all things demonic,I named this one,"Dante's inferno".The Lizzard King kicked me down his favorite Scorpion wallpaper. ...and I just couldn't resist.

I'll bet I spent 3 or 4 hours a night tweaking and deleting and cursing,trying to learn how to use all the options and such.Oh,..I could have read the instructions that came with the program,but following instructions is for Pansy's.I'm more of a,"What's this button for?" kinda guy...It was frustrating,and time consuming,..and a total blast!I hope this post has found you and yours in the best of health and spirits.As for me,..I really think I can get the user icon properly centered on my next try.

26 Comments:

It's very nearly 2am as I type these words...and all I can think of is why you capitalized Pansy. Do you know a Pansy? Or perhaps multiple Pansy's? Are they all sticklers for following directions? I'm sleepy.

Directions are for the geeks that write the program. No real human could ever understand or follow them. Pansy's and Violets are in the same family. They are really pretty. Violets are my favorite flower therefore pansy's might be my second favorite.

I loved the Commodore 64 some of the greatest games ever were on that thing. My favorite was one, maybe called Hero, where a guy went spelunking while wearing a jetpack and shot spiders. Man that was a really good game. Blue Max, storymaker, That game where I always got eaten by a gru, programming the turtle with logo. Oh the memories.

Okay, geek that I am, you'd think I would have had a C-64, right? Nope. Could NOT afford one. In fact, I remember not being able to afford an HP-35 calculator in college when practically every other engineering student had one. It sucks to be poor. The first PC I ever got to mess with was an XT with dual 5 1/4" floppies (no hard drive), a green screen, and maybe 512kb of RAM. But the first personal computer I ever got to mess with was an Apple (not sure of the model) with the OS on a 12-second long cassette tape. San Francisco, 1977. The two Steves were always in the place (we duped the tapes for them). Pretty cool stuff.

And if you think I didn't Google Logon Studio immediately and download it to play with, you really don't know me very well.

Oh, and I pretty much never read instructions. Like you, I'm a "what's THIS button do?" kinda gal.

The biggest fight I ever had with my beloved was when he borrowed money to buy his first computer - an Apple of some sort. I thought it was way to expensive for a toy. He framed a copy of the first check he earned using that computer and hung it on the wall by the computer. His way of saying he was right.I've lost count of the number of replacement computers we've owned, but we now have four working ones in our office.

mom- Who knew back in the days of "Pong" what this technology would become?..Now it seems as though it's always been around.I remember how cool it was the first time I made a few bucks sitting at my computer...what a concept!